The sheer amount of news stories, studies, interviews, and papers released on this topic to date is nothing short of mind-numbing.  As is the amount of finger-pointing, contradictions, and paranoia that exists on both sides of the debate. For every study that you find that either proves or disproves the connection between vaccines and autism, you will find a laundry list of concerns regarding the way the studies were set up and who funded them.

Complicating the issue further is the possibility that, the link between autism and vaccines (if there is one) may not be clear cut.  Its entirely possible that vaccines may trigger autism in children who are “genetically susceptible” to the disease.  Its also possible that it is not any one vaccine (or vaccine component) that can be linked to autism, but rather the fact that so many vaccines are given in so short a time, that may cause trigger the onset of autism.

In other words, regardless of your stance on the vaccine/autism issue, there is no shortage of information to support and/or refute your claim.  Here are some links where you can find more details about vaccines and autism.

Pro-Vaccine: There is no link between vaccines and autism

• : “The weight of the evidence indicates that vaccines are not associated with autism.”
• :”there is no scientifically proven link between measles vaccination and autism.”
• Dr. Paul Ofitt, Director, Vaccine Education Center, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia: “Studies of 1) the genetics of autism, 2) the timing of the first symptoms of autism (home-movie studies), 3) the relationship between autism and the receipt of the MMR vaccine, 4) the histopathology of the central nervous system of children with autism, and 5) thalidomide, natural rubella infection, fragile X syndrome, and tuberous sclerosis all support the fact that autism occurs during development of the central nervous system early in utero.” (From )
• : “There is no link between autism and the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine or the vaccine preservative thimerosal, according to a report released by the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) .”
• : To date there is no definite, scientific proof that any vaccine or combination of vaccines can cause autism.”

Anti-Vaccine: There is a strong link between vaccines and autism

• (Kids Need Options With Vaccines): “The strong correlation between autism and vaccine history becomes even more credible when the disease characteristics for both autism and mercury poisoning are compared.”
• Autism Research Institute: List of studies linking thimerosal and/or the MMR vaccine to autism: and
• : 2005 book identifies a possible link between thimerosal and rising rates of autism.
• : Jenny McCarthy’s organization that researches the causes and treatments for autism.
• : The blog of Ginger Taylor, and “autism mom” who writes about “news and commentary on the autism epidemic and my beautiful boy who is living with autism.”

Is your head spinning yet?  Now consider these two recent headlines in the vaccine/autism debate:

March 2008: The Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Vaccine Injury Compensation concluded that in the case of (an eight year girl whose parents believe her autism was caused by vaccines,) an underlying illness that had predisposed her to symptoms of autism was “significantly aggravated” by the vaccinations she received as a toddler and that her family should therefore be compensated.

Feburay 1, 2009: A new study published in the journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases, finds “there is no correlation between vaccines and autism.”

And so we’re back to square one.

Photo: “Artism: art for Autism” by .

If your just tuning in, we’re talking about vaccinations this week.  And I’ve even postponed our usual “Waste-Free Wednesday” post so that I can continue focusing on the pros and cons of vaccination. Yesterday, we took a long look at the reasons to consider vaccination.

In today’s post, I’d like to take a look at the flip side of the argument…the many risks associated with vaccinations.  Reader Amanda McNabb sent me an amazingly concise and well thought out response about why she chose not to vaccinate her children.  Each of the points that she mentioned were brought up time and again in the research I conducted on vaccines, so I thought I would use her email as a starting point for discussion.  Here are the reasons why Amanda chose not to vaccinate her children.

The diseases that we vaccinate for rarely kill anybody in areas with good sanitation, good personal hygiene, and proper nutrition.

→I have to interject and point out a few of the points brought up yesterday.  For starters, many of the deadly diseases that vaccines are created to counter are no longer around BECAUSE so many people vaccinate their children.  Also, this point is not entirely accurate.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still lists several deaths each year that are attributable to measles.  And in 2005, an outbreak of polio broke out in an Amish community amongst unvaccinated children.

Many of the diseases we vaccinate for are not even things that my child is likely to come into contact with. For example; polio is not found in the “wild” in the US. Hep B is transmitted the same way as AIDS. Tetanus is found in the feces of animals and would have to be on the item that breaks the skin, at which point they will give a tetanus shot even if you’d had one the day before.

→Polio is rare, but it is still found in the wild in the U.S.  Hep B is a sexually transmitted disease, but it is also transmitted via any type of bodily fluid transfer…sharing a toothbrush, drinking from the same glass, etc.  This is unlike AIDS that can only be transmitted via sexual or blood contact.  As for tetanus, it is caused by a toxin produced by a type of bacteria found worldwide in soil and most surfaces.  It is not limited to animal feces and the item does not have to break the skin in order to cause an infection, it can also be ingested.  Take a minute to think about how much a new baby spends crawling around on the ground both indoors and out, and you can see why a tetanus shot is recommended.

Vaccination causes a false immunity, which does not last. Hence never ending boosters.

→This is a great point.  As is the case with the flu shot, there is no guarantee that vaccines will keep your baby free from disease.

The way that you activate the immune system is by exposing it at all levels to the bug. By skipping the mucous linings along the gut and putting it straight into the blood, you are not actually stimulating the immune system.

→I don’t really understand this point and would welcome further discussion.  As far as I know, any time a person get sick, the illness enters the body via the same means as a vaccine would.  So how would the immune response be different for vaccines than it would for the actual disease?

I would think that being exposed to multiple diseases in one shot would tend to create a mutant response.

→

This is another excellent point!  As Robyn Chittister of Antioch, CA pointed out, “So, I can’t give my 2 month old cow’s milk, but I can inject him with 7 different diseases, including viruses and bacteria, antibiotics, aluminum, and all the rest? “  I couldn’t agree more. A babies developing immune system is a fragile thing, and it seems ridiculous to inject them with several potentially life threatening illnesses at the same time in an effort to keep them healthy.

You have to look at the preservatives. Mercury is bad, and even thought they say they don’t use it anymore, I was on the FDA’s website about a month ago and they listed the ingredients. If you don’t want mercury, you have to make sure you are very specific in which brand and what year it was manufactured.

→According to the CDC website, “since 2001, with the exception of some influenza (flu) vaccines, thimerosal is not used as a preservative in routinely recommended childhood vaccines.”  That’s comforting, however, I couldn’t find any information about how many vaccines created before 2001 were still in circulation today.  So if you do choose to vaccinate your child, ask your health care provider about the year the vaccination was produced or ask to see the package insert that came with the product to verify that it is thimerosal-free yourself.

And even without the thimerosal, there is good reason to question the safety of the ingredients used to create vaccines.  According to Healthy Child, “In light of all the other types of pollution our bodies are assaulted with in our everyday lives, some of us have to ask ourselves if it is wise to inject vaccines containing known carcinogens and toxins (including mercury, formaldehyde and aluminum) into our children’s bodies when so little is known about the possible side effects. It appears that we may be trading one set of diseases for another that is chronic and debilitating.”

Vaccines are exempt from prosecution. If something goes wrong, the company has NO accountability. Yes I know about VAERS and the government money set aside.

→The Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) receives 11,000 reports of vaccine reactions each year.  The government has funds set aside to compensate patients that have had adverse reactions to a vaccine.  But if vaccines are so safe then why be afraid of lawsuits, and why have money set aside to buy off people?

In addition, the FDA acknowledges that the number of cases reported to VAERS actually represents  less than 10% of actual vaccine reactions.  TEN PERCENT!  In other words, the data produced by the FDA and CDC regarding the safety of vaccines is based on what they realized is an under-reporting of the actual side effects caused by vaccines.

In most cases, this under-reporting is caused by a doctors disbelief that a vaccine could cause a certain reaction.  For instance, consider this example given on the FDA website:

“A mother recently called FDA because her child’s hair had fallen out each time the child received a dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. The mother said she asked the pediatrician whether the vaccine could have caused the hair loss, but the pediatrician was sure that couldn’t be the case. In fact, after the second dose of the vaccine and subsequent hair loss, the doctor was preparing to do a scalp biopsy to determine the cause.

A search of the VAERS database found 45 cases of hair loss after hepatitis B vaccination. Of those, 15 cases were like this one, in which hair loss happened after each of two doses of the vaccine.”

This was a common thread that I found among the HUNDREDS of responses I received from parents who choose not to vaccinate their children.  One email after the next told about horrible reactions that their own child, or a friend’s child had to a vaccine…reactions that were discounted by medical professionals who simply could not believe that a vaccine could cause such a reaction.  According to the FDA, doctors shouldn’t try to make that judgment, they should just report it.

I personally believe that a lot of the research on the safety of vaccines is junk science. It is unethical for companies to test things on people that they think will make them worse. As soon as it becomes undeniable that a drug makes people sick, the trial is stopped. It would be unethical to do otherwise. Therefore, any research showing a bad outcome from a drug or vaccine is stopped before the final results are in. Therefore all research will say that it works, has no effect, or is inconclusive.

→This isn’t entirely accurate. If a drug were making people sick, the trial would be stopped, but if the trial were stopped for any reason, the drug would have to be discontinued. Of greater concern is the number of reactions that go unreported, both during these safety trials and once the drug has been released to the wider population. As mentioned above, the medical community as a whole grossly under reports vaccine side effects, both large and small. This renders much of the data on vaccine safety meaningless.

Some of the vaccines are cultured in aborted fetal tissue.

→According to the CDC, the vaccines for MMR and varicella are grown, in part, in aborted fetal tissue. This presents an ethical dilemma for parents who are pro-life and against the use of aborted fetuses for medical testing.

Thanks so much to Amanda for so clearly articulating many of the reasons that parents choose not to vaccinate their children. You may have noticed that this post did NOT discuss one the major reasons that many parents choose not to vaccinate…the potential links between vaccination and autism and other serious diseases. That is because that topic was way to large to fit into one or two paragraphs. Check back tomorrow when the day’s post will look at all of the information regarding vaccines and autism.

Photo by Julie Oliver

I write today as a polio survivor. In late 1953, eight children out of twenty-four in our first grade classroom contracted polio. My twin brother died sixty-one hours after admission. Two of my friends died several years later of complications. On the night my twin was buried, I was admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of paralytic polio. Later on that week, my mother suffered a miscarriage. Fortunately, I eventually recovered… What our family experienced was not unusual. Families all over the world suffered similar tragedies before the polio vaccine.

Because of the success of vaccines, many young parents have never seen the diseases that once plagued children and haunted every parent on the globe. For that reason, parents are more vulnerable to the hype that permeates today’s media.

Although the wild-poliovirus has been eradicated from our country, it has not been eradicated worldwide. Because of globalization, therefore, public health officials call polio a disease that is “just a plane trip away.”

Jan Nichols, New York

Many of us have never been touched by diseases like polio, diphtheria, and measles. But regardless of your stance on the vaccination issue, there is no denying that the reduction of these diseases is due by and large to the widespread use of vaccines.  But there’s no guarantee that these disease won’t become prominent again. In some parts of the world, including Asia and Africa, polio still maims and kills thousands of people each year.  Take a look at this info on vaccination as you weigh your decision to vaccinate your own children.

How do vaccines work?

When you get sick, your body creates white blood cells that target the infection and destroy it.  This system is very effective for common illnesses like colds and the flu.  But other diseases are more difficult for the immune system to tackle at full strength.

The purpose of a vaccine is to stimulate the immune system with a weakened form of the disease so that it can build up its supply of white blood cells more successfully. Vaccines are made by using killed germs, parts of germs, naturally occurring less severe forms of the germs, or live germs modified to be less dangerous.  When a vaccine is given to a healthy body, it can stimulate the immune process  with a much lower risk of injury to the body.

Vaccination Facts

• In 1962, the year before measles vaccine was introduced, almost 500,000 cases of measles were reported in the U.S. Ten years later, there were about 32,000 cases, and by 1982 there were fewer than 2,000. In 1998 and 1999, only about 100 measles cases were reported each year.
• Worldwide, measles killed about 345,000 people in 2005….311,000 of these deaths were children under the age of five.
• In the 1920s, there were 100,000-200,000 cases of diphtheria each year with 13,000-15,000 deaths. Since the introduction of the vaccine for diphtheria the disease has dramatically declined from a high of 206,939 reported cases in 1921 to 1 case in 2002.
• Hib meningitis killed 600 children each year, and caused seizures among many survivors as well as permanent deafness, and mental retardation. Since the vaccine’s introduction in 1987, the incidence of Hib has declined by 98%  in the United States.
• Chicken pox (or varicella) is often thought of as a “rite of passage” for kids.  But it has also been the cause of 11,000 hospitalizations and 100 deaths in the U.S. alone.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report a decline in the prevalence of the disease since a vaccine was introduced in 1995.

Why vaccinate?

Here are just a few excerpts from the hundreds of comments I received on why parents choose to vaccinate:

Small, but significant chance my kid could die or be permanently debilitated by a horrible disease? Or unbelievably tiny chance that vaccines might, in some way we don’t understand at all, increase the risk of autism? No choice, to me — unless someone comes up with some solid evidence that changes things, every kid will get vaccinated, against everything they have a vaccine for, as soon as my pediatrician tells me it’s time.
Darren P. Meyer
St. Paul, MN

I just never want my children to contract a disease like polio and have the deformities, pain and difficulty breathing that my children’s Granny B had.

Karie Stern
Mill Valley, CA

My wife and I have a 16 year old son, Nicholas, who has been variously diagnosed as mildly autistic, Aspberger’s Syndrome, Pervasive Developmental Disorder/Not otherwise specified, EIEIO. We have read the books about vaccines and ASD’s, but we are skeptical about the relationship.

Simply stated, there is not enough scientific proof that any one thing causes Autism or Autistic Spectrum Disorders.
Rudy Alvarez

El Cajon, CA

Are vaccines worth the risk?
A-ha.  That is the billion dollar question.  There is no denying that vaccines work to reduce the incidence of disease.  But are they worth the risk?  Stop back tomorrow when I’ll post about the risks associated with vaccines.

No parent wants to see their child get sick.  Diseases like polio and measles are scary to think about…even for those of us who have never been touched by their effects.  The good news is that today’s children will grow up in a time when modern medicine and vaccines can help prevent a number of previously fatal diseases.  The bad news is that there are a number of red flags that have been raised about the safety of the vaccines themselves. So what’s a concerned parent to do?

As I mentioned in my previous post on , I have decided to stop avoiding the issue on this blog and face it head on.  I poured through books, talked to the experts, read every blog post I could find and asked parents around the country to share their thoughts about vaccination.   Here are a few examples of the comments I received:

My son has benefited greatly from treatments to heal the damage that vaccines have done to his body. I truly believe that some day this will be known as The Biggest Mistake in Medical History.
–Kim Spencer, Savannah, GA

I vaccinate my kids. What could be greener than not only, well, staying alive, but helping others stay alive too by reducing the prevalence of these diseases?
–Joshua Zucker, Menlo Park, CA

Needless to say, passions flared on both sides of this contentious issue.  I have no desire to feed the flames, only to provide an unbiased source of information for parents struggling with this decision.  Because the most important thing you can do to ensure your child’s safety is to find out as much current information as you can about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and make your decision accordingly.

I’m not even going to try to put all of this info into one blog post.  The result would be so long and tedious, you’d never be able to wade through it.  Instead, I’m dedicating this whole week to understanding the pros and cons of vaccination.  So if this issue is near and dear to your heart, please check back every day this week for updated posts on vaccination.  And feel free to weigh in at any time with your own thoughts on the issue.

Photo courtesy of

To Vaccinate or Not To Vaccinate